


the horizon tries (but it's just not as kind on the eyes)

by orphan_account



Category: Portrait de la jeune fille en feu | Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Genre: Art Major AU, F/F, Muses and Museums, this flowed out of me in 2 seconds at 1am so i guess i peaked
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:21:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23506774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Marianne goes to the museum hoping to be inspired by the paintings. She finds inspiration in Hélöise instead.
Relationships: Héloïse/Marianne (Portrait of a Lady on Fire)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 91





	the horizon tries (but it's just not as kind on the eyes)

**Author's Note:**

> title from arabella by arctic monkeys because i'm feeling basic at 5am

It’s been a week since her pencils last moved. Marianne has been piloting through an art block worse than any she’d ever experienced, an inspiration drought that she never saw coming and was not prepared for. It wouldn’t be a big deal had she developed any other real ways to pass time; cooking can only take up so many hours, and there’s a limit to her patience for movies that never seem to get interesting. What usually triggers her imagination today falls flat. Everything as dull as the hallways inside her old school’s lab, tedious as the way a pawn moves, opaque, grey, infuriating. She exhausts every resource she can think of, failing to see why inspiration deliveries haven’t been invented yet; she has even tried to get her dog to paint something, anything, even a paw print, but Gino runs from the paint like he fears it’ll suck the life out of him.

Week two is spent on walks that attempt to remind her not everything is ugly. Marianne knows she’s surrounded by people and buildings and stories, but nothing is worth noting. Even Gino sees more colors than her.

Once week three rolls around, she’s in a purely philosophical phase that has yet to take the first wild turn. She tries to remember how art began, and the idea that’ll save her life suddenly appears to have been born: the museum. It seems evident, almost obscene in its obviousness. She should have turned to the greats a long time ago, but only now, alert, does she notice the gravity that pulls her towards it.

Marianne walks in and something instantly shifts. Inside the museum time doesn’t seem to move. Degrees don’t rise or descend, stuck, and the paintings introduce themselves all at once. Gravity stops pulling and somehow she knows she’s done the right thing. It might be something about the warmth these walls radiate, the fact she’s not the only person with a sketchpad in her hand, or how the static in the air changes as she walks from piece to piece. She strolls across the first hall thinking something might finally speak to her, hoping it’s  _ that one _ about every painting on sight. Radio silence. It’s unbelievable, really, comedy gold by all standards. Marianne starts questioning how she ever painted anything at all when even the world’s biggest masterpieces fail to catch her eye.

In the second room she finds a different atmosphere. It’s not as electric as the first exhibit, better lit but less calm. The paintings still blend together in her eyes, in stark contrast to what the people are doing. Marianne stops walking to look at them, not knowing why, eyes following their paths for a few seconds each, the way a dog looks for the one bee he’d like to catch out of the entire hive. She soon realizes the only way she’ll get her mojo back is if she finds something to follow, not to look at, something that moves and tells her something she can translate into a palette. Statues and paintings won’t cut it, she decides, craving sweet things and a muse that’s more than that.

She takes a seat on one of the benches and starts thinking with her gaze. She doesn’t have any kind of shame, she realizes, looking people in the eye as she stares, waiting for someone to make her ears burn. Some faces are too sour, some are shaped like her grandmother’s mirror that she always hated and some don’t bother looking back. She’s not complaining this time: she’s in no rush, finally knowing what she’s after. At some point she starts sketching, random bits that might not have anything to do with what she sees but are triggered by actions she witnesses. The tourists become one big ecosystem; if that kid throws an empty can in the trash, her pencil moves. If two men argue in a whisper about the spark in that cherub’s eye, her pencil moves. If a mother shushes her son and the boy looks at a girl that looks at a fly that aims for the David, her pencil moves. Her pencil moves until someone walks in.

When Marianne’s head turns by itself she thinks nothing of it. When her cheeks flush she starts paying attention. But when her gaze meets the woman’s eyes, under a domed roof that’s on fire, she wonders how the oils haven’t melted yet.

In the background there’s her smile, but _ don’t panic. Hold your heart still with one hand and open your sketchbook with two fingers.  _ A different plane appears, painted trees unfold their leaves into the sea, the kid from before learns how to swim, time becomes so full of air and itself and the earth’s winds, a cat’s shadow, the smell of bread.  _ Sit still on the bench. Pretend you’re standing and blind.  _ Everything that she could have drawn comes crashing down silently as she tries to see her without looking; everything runs through the clock’s veins _ like blood should be running through yours, if only you could afford to miss her for a minute. _

This museum is now a one-piece show for a one-person audience. Marianne catches the tilt of her head, the spark in her eye; her hair speaks to her in a dialect of rhymes and silk. The sight of her is divine and Marianne is fully awake. She doesn’t choose her, because one doesn’t choose the lightning that strikes the backyard and shatters the windows, the way one doesn’t choose what rain chills us to the bone on a sunday night. For a second she thinks her eyes are scandalously lying to her, desperate for the kind of high that running into this kind of beauty causes; she drowns in that thought for no longer than a millisecond. The woman is looking back, heightening Marianne’s interest and making her eyes brighter, hotter; their eyes are growing and growing closer: nothing in this entire building could ever describe the kind of pull, uncertain and red, woven in tension, a face that nearly draws itself into Marianne’s page, because even when she’s not looking she is, and when she’s not too busy she bites her lip to keep herself grounded, paralyzed in this slice of nirvana.

Sooner than Marianne can handle, the woman is sitting next to her. She clears her throat to mask the small slap she gives herself, landing back in reality just in time to catch a  _ “Is that me?” _

Clueless as to other options, Marianne smiles, looks down at the sketch, careful to not let her heart be seen through her eyes, and with a kind of calm she doesn’t recognize, she says “Yes. I’m sorry, I should have asked—”

The woman puts a hand on her shoulder. Two universes away, she faints. “Can I see?”

“Of course.” Marianne would be hesitant if relief wasn’t overshadowing her every sense. She hands over the notebook and studies her reaction. Only there’s no such thing.

After a couple moments the woman hands it back. “That’s not me,” she says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, like she can’t even be bothered to be offended. They lock eyes again.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s not me,” she repeats, but this time there’s amusement behind it. “Is that really what you saw?”

Marianne doesn’t know what to say; she can’t tell her what she actually saw. There’s no logical way of explaining how everything else faded into a blinding light that didn’t even manage to outshine her eyes, the most magnetic part of the vision but by no means the most interesting; there’s no way she can put into words how her hands grew their own consciences just so they could draw her, in case she disappeared right then or right now, because Marianne wasn’t sure she was real or a product of a brain deprived of beauty for half a month.

“What are you, an art critic?”

The woman chuckles. “No, but I’m me.”

“Deep,” Marianne nods, secretly rejoicing in the smile that doesn’t leave the woman’s lips. She doesn’t get a response for a while. As they sit there, in silence, letting people walk by them as their breaths grow coordinated, Marianne wonders if she notices the static. Would she shock her if they touched?

She would, and she does: the woman gets up and holds out her hand. “Come on.” Marianne doesn’t think for a moment before accepting, relishing the electricity and the power they hold in their laced fingers, and she only asks where they’re going once they’re halfway down the stairs.

The woman looks back at her. “When we come back you’ll have drawn me.”

* * *

Hélöise bites her lip and Marianne traces it, traces her mouth and draws it as if it was coming out of her hands, as if her lips were parting under her for the very first time, and closing her eyes is enough to erase it and start over again. She makes her mouth appear every time she wants, switching between sketches and caresses, letting her hand decide, tracing this divine mouth chosen with all freedom by an incomprehensible luck that she doesn’t attempt to comprehend, but that allowed them to coincide and now allows Hélöise to smile at the touch of the hand that draws her.

She looks at her from up close, closer each time, gazes and desires and breaths overlapping, a sigh every now and then, and every now and then a kiss. Their mouths wrestle warmly, lips bitten, tongues sweet, playing under heavy air that comes and goes and brings back perfume and some silence. Marianne’s hands find Hélöise’s hair as they kiss and Hélöise makes them roll over in one movement. Earlobes are nibbled and the pain is sweet, and beats are skipped and missed and not regretted, fleeting and terrible simultaneous catchings of breath. There’s only one flavour, one shared ripe fruit, wam skin on warmer skin, clothes and pencils falling off beds; she feels her tremble under her weight the way the moon would tremble over water.

Marianne has drawn Hélöise dozens of times now. Hélöise has finally started seeing herself in the pages, but she’ll fake skepticism and Marianne will fake believing, they’ll fake surprise when the other starts taking their clothes off, and each day a new painting will be born from endless kisses and endless laughs from a muse that’s so much more.

**Author's Note:**

> if you caught any grammatical mistakes don't be shy and tell me, i might be sleep deprived or high or both.
> 
> stay home lesbians <3


End file.
